The romance genre has been a staple of fiction since long before the first movies were made. Love's one of those rare universal themes, after all, and both romantics and cynics have always been able to find - and enjoy - different stories about fictional characters falling in (or out of) love. And like many broad genres, it's possible to combine romantic storylines with various other tried and true genres, which can add extra emotional engagement to a story, or otherwise ensure it attracts a wider audience.

Depending on one's definition of "romance," it might well be one of the most well-represented genres in cinema, thanks to the popularity of romantic subplots. However, when it comes to deciding the greatest romance movies of all time, it's best to focus on those films where the romance-focused aspect of the story feels like a priority. What follows are some of the best movies that emphasize - and thereby epitomize - the romance genre, and are ranked below from great to greatest.

50 'Notorious' (1946)

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

The words “romance” and “Alfred Hitchcock” don’t tend to go together in the minds of most, given the director was best known for making thrillers, dark comedies, and crime movies. But Alfred Hitchcock's great films were often accessible and broadly appealing, and part of this sometimes meant including romance elements. With something like Notorious, those romance elements actually appear in a surprisingly prominent way, with the thriller/mystery stuff almost taking a backseat to the romance at times.

Notorious takes place in the wake of World War II, and follows the way a romantic bond between two people threatens to undermine an attempt to unearth a high-ranking Nazi hiding out in Brazil. It’s a film that expertly looks at love while also being a gripping spy movie and one of the best post-World War II films made immediately after the conclusion of the war itself.

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49 'Trouble in Paradise' (1932)

Directed by Ernst Lubitsch

Ranking among the greatest movies of the 1930s, Trouble in Paradise may well be more than 90 years old, but much of it feels pretty well timeless. It blends a crime-related storyline with romance and comedy in a way that still feels rather fresh and engaging, following a man and woman who are romantically involved and make their money through pickpocketing.

Complications ensue when a love triangle ends up developing, since the man begins to fall in love with a wealthy woman the pair have set their sights on as their next target. Trouble in Paradise sees the somewhat underrated Ernst Lubitsch firing on all cylinders as a filmmaker, and it’s easy to see how a film like this proved influential for the genres it tackles in the decades since its release.

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48 'Silver Linings Playbook' (2012)

Directed by David O. Russell

Silver Linings Playbook might be fairly recent in the overall scheme of things, but it still feels good enough to label as something of a modern classic that future decades will hopefully be kind to (admittedly, it can be hard to know for sure how a film will age and be viewed in the years to come). It centers on a troubled man being released from a psychiatric hospital and moving back in with his parents, all the while trying to reconnect with his ex-wife, yet finds a connection between him and another woman complicates matters.

It was a significant movie for its two stars, showing that Bradley Cooper could do more than just be in The Hangover movies while working in tandem with a very different mainstream hit - The Hunger Games - to demonstrate that Jennifer Lawrence was a force to be reckoned with. Those two plus a great supporting cast that includes Robert De Niro, Jacki Weaver, and Chris Tucker make Silver Linings Playbook an approachable and engaging film, and one that blends comedy, romance, and drama genres well.

47 'Wings' (1927)

Directed by William A. Wellman

Serving as a bit of a genre-buster, Wings is a romance film, a melodrama, a World War I movie, and also something of an action movie, given how many dogfighting sequences are featured. It centers on two fighter pilots who are both in love with the same woman, and how this eventually threatens their friendship, all the while they also have to deal with the dangers of serving in World War I.

It’s understandably old-fashioned, but that’s a word that can be thrown at most movies that are almost a century old. So long as one’s okay with silent movies and some pacing that feels a little slow by modern standards, Wings has a ton to offer, with a simple but effective romantic narrative, and action set pieces that genuinely hold up extremely well.

46 'The Lady Eve' (1941)

Directed by Preston Sturges

Preston Sturges may not have directed many movies, but the ones he did make were generally winners, to the point where it’s possible to say he was a quality-over-quantity type of filmmaker. The Lady Eve is rightly considered one of his best and most enjoyable efforts (even by the oftentimes dour Paul Schrader), following a female con artist who targets a wealthy man, falls for him, has her con exposed, gets dumped by the man, and then tries to win him back by posing as a different person altogether.

If that all sounds a little screwball comedy to you, that’s because The Lady Eve is one! It takes a premise that's perfect for this old-school and endearing style of comedy and runs with it for a fast-paced and entertaining 97 minutes, with the romantic heart of the film ultimately shining just as much as the broader comedic elements.

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45 'Closer' (2004)

Directed by Mike Nichols

Those who are after a nice or pleasant movie probably won’t find it with Closer, which is a surprisingly dark and emotionally intense romance film. It takes an approach that might normally be played for comedy – a tangling of romantic partners when two couples clash and form a complex web of infidelity and lies – but looks at the ramifications of doing such a thing with grit and plenty of hard feelings.

Closer is, therefore, something of a miserable movie, but it’s also captivating and admirable for how brutally honest it gets in its exploration of the hazards of love. Also helping things immensely is the fact that the four lead actors here all give genuinely great performances, with Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman, and Clive Owen all getting ample opportunities to shine.

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44 'The Man Who Loved Women' (1977)

Directed by François Truffaut